Long non-coding RNA SPRY4-IT1 expression in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma and its effects on cell growth / 中国肿瘤临床

Objective:This study aimed to clarify the correlation of SPRY4-IT1 expression with the clinicopathological character-istics and prognosis of patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC), as well as the role of SPRY4-IT1 in promoting ES-CC cell growth. Methods:Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction for SPRY4-IT1 expression was performed on 50 paired can-cerous and adjacent non-cancerous esophageal specimens. Small interfering RNA was used to suppress SPRY4-IT1 expression to fur-ther explore its role in tumor progression. Cell viability was tested in vitro by MTT assay (OD=490 nm), and cell apoptosis and cell cy-cle were investigated by flow cytometry. Results:We found markedly elevated SPRY4-IT1 expression in cancerous tissues compared with adjacent non-cancerous tissues (90%, P0.05). Further experiments showed that SPRY4-IT1 expression levels were significantly higher in three ESCC cell lines than in the normal human esophageal epithelial cell line Het-1A. In vitro assays of the ESCC cell line KYSE30 demonstrated that knockdown of SPRY4-IT1 expression by small interfering RNA reduced cell growth, mediated cell cycle arrest at the G0-G1 phase, and promoted cell apoptosis (all P<0.01). Conclusion:SPRY4-IT1 was overexpressed in ESCC tissues and ESCC cell lines and promoted the growth of ESCC cells. The dysregulated expression of long non-coding RNA SPRY4-IT1 may play an important role in the process of ESCC development and may be developed as a useful biomarker for the diagnosis and prognosis of ESCC.

Introduction and advantage analysis of the stepwise method for the construction of vascular trees / 生物医学工程学杂志

A new method for constructing the model of vascular trees was proposed in this paper. By use of this method, the arterial trees in good agreement with the actual structure could be grown. In this process, all vessels in the vascular tree were divided into two groups: the conveying vessels, and the delivering branches. And different branches could be built by different ways. Firstly, the distributing rules of conveying vessels were ascertained by use of measurement data, and then the conveying vessels were constructed in accordance to the statistical rule and optimization criterion. Lastly, delivering branches were modeled by constrained constructive optimization (CCO) on the conveying vessel-trees which had already been generated. In order to compare the CCO method and stepwise method proposed here, two 3D arterial trees of human tongue were grown with their vascular tree having a special structure. Based on the corrosion casts of real arterial tree of human tongue, the data about the two trees constructed by different methods were compared and analyzed, including the averaged segment diameters at respective levels, the distribution and the diameters of the branches of first level at respective directions. The results show that the vascular tree built by stepwise method is more similar to the true arterial of human tongue when compared against the tree built by CCO method.

Univariate analysis of influential parameters for lingual temperature / 生物医学工程学杂志

The parameters which can influence heat transfer of tongue were analyzed in order to reveal the reason why the tongue temperature fields of people with different diseases are distinct. Firstly, the research parameters were determined by experiment results, including the reference humidity of tongue surface, metabolic heat of tongue tissue, the entrance position of root vessel, the diameter of root vessel, the blood flow rate, and the bifurcation exponent of vascular tree. Then the effect of each parameter on the value and the distributing rule of tongue temperature field was analyzed by using a mathematic model of lingual temperature field. Results show that all these parameters have effects on the temperature value of tongue. The reference humidity of tongue surface, the metabolic heat of tongue tissue and the entrance position of root vessel are distinct influences on the distributing rule of tongue temperature.